rebirth
by Lady Paprika
Summary: Choose your friends wisely. For lyokolife6's Horror Story Contest.


**RATED M FOR SECKSHUAL THINGS (lolol lemonz?! mai b, u perv winkface but mai b nut), WORDS THAT INCLUDE "Shit" and "Fuck" and "cunt" and LIKE LOADS OF GORE BECAUSE IF THERE'S ONE THING I HAVEN'T LEARNED FROM HOW MANY PEOPLE WATCH A GAME OF THRONES, IT'S THAT GORE IS DEFINITELY A CROWD-PLEASER. OMG WE CRAVE VIOLENCE WE'RE SUCH LITTLE SHITS.**

**...Sorry, it's like really late and I'm not sure if that's a good enough excuse... Hm, probably not. Oh well. I promise this is serious or at least I hope it is. I don't know. We'll see. I don't really scare easily which is why I oftentimes stray away from horror because if I'm not scared then whose to say if anybody else will find it scary? But if one person was freaked out then I guess I've done my job.**

**Mainly though, the reason I joined this contest was because I hate thinking I can't do things and I like to challenge myself. Horror is probably one of the biggest challenges for me, bigger than humor actually. I can't write creepy to save my life which is why this was attempted.**

**Just to disclaim this is for lyokolife6's Horror story contest, and I own nothing. What? You say that lyokolife's contest deadline has passed and that my entry is null? WELL HONEYBADGER DONT GIVE A SHIT WHAT YOU THINK.**

**Onwards!**

•

We never know when it comes or how it'll come until the moment it faces you. In the mean time, we never think once about it because we refuse to look at what's right in front of us. Death creeps up on us, glides at our heels, as sure as our own shadow. It chokes our hearts, stabs us in the back, eases our soul out from our bodies as we sleep, making our comas permanent.

For most of us, we don't think about it until we're full of wrinkles. And an even less amount of us think about taking another person's life because for most of us, killing is incredibly hard no matter what anybody says.

But for others, for whatever reason, it comes easily. All it takes is one little push to see the potential we carry to slit a person's throat and to take the mantle that most are terrified of.

After all, life is just a game and the losers are the ones who are too afraid to cross the line to do what's necessary.

And if you can't break the rules, then you're not playing it right.

•

The thing you had to realize was that Game was the kind of person everybody wanted to be around. In the most generic terms, he was smart, funny, intelligent and with those black eyes and that tousled black hair, he was incredibly attractive. It was no secret that everybody wanted to be around Game. Some people just had _it_. He had a lot of it.

In contrast, I didn't. I was the girl that people picked on. I guess it had something to do with the fact that I was a Climber and being a Climber was a bad thing. We were the people who moved into Fairview and stole your jobs. We were the people who spoke a different language that just didn't sound quite as romantic as French, or fluid as Spanish or intelligent as English. We were _those_ people who, when we walked by you, you stopped talking, waited for us to pass you by and continued to talk. We were the ones on the news.

In short, we were the butt of everybody's racial jokes but we also took _pride_ in that. At least we had an identity, a culture we belonged to. Climbers helped out Climbers whenever we saw one another. Our community was tight knit. You couldn't say that for people like Samus, Peach or Game.

So it wasn't exactly a shock that I found myself followed on the way home after a late shift by three guys. I wasn't particularly pretty - I had a plain face, lank hair and I was short. But then, who said rape was ever about the attractiveness of a person? Part of being a Climber was that in courts, if a girl said she was raped, she was lying. If a Climber was present at a crime scene, he was the first one that the police searched and more often than not, was found guilty. Even worse, if a Climber was found dead, nothing ever happened to the person who did it.

What did you do in a justice system that didn't protect you based on your native language, the way you dressed, and the color of your skin? Nothing. Run and hope that those guys wouldn't outrun me.

But they did at the end of Juniper Street, pressed me into a dark alley. "Think she's a virgin?" One of them asked as they got a good look at me.

In movies, the woman often tries to fight back. She will claw at her captor, scream, do anything. But this was real life, and my throat had closed up and my hands were frozen in place.

"Nah, you know what they say about Climber cunts, right? Wide as the base of the mountains they're from." A round of raucous laughter went around them. The words hurt even more than when the first man slammed me against an alleyway.

"Please..." I said. I hated the way my voice trembled, hated the way I was putty in his hands. "Don't do this." The fact that I had to beg for mercy was what I really hated. I smelled alcohol on this man's breath and bit my lip trying to fight against myself not to plead anymore.

"She's definitely a virgin," the other man said. "Too ugly to be one otherwise." More laughter, and the man addressed me again. He had ice cold eyes, "It's your lucky day Climber bitch."

"Please..."

The man slammed me against the wall again, this time spitting in my face. "Don't speak like that 'gain, you hear?"

It wasn't the fact that I was about to get raped that changed in me. It wasn't even the fact that I was probably going to die afterward. It was the way his spittle flung into my face and exploded on my cheek that made me snap. I couldn't say exactly what it was, just that at that moment, I _welcomed_ death, rape, all of it and I sincerely hoped they died. "Go ahead then," I said, in a voice that did not sound like mine. I pressed my body against his. "Rape me."

Confused, both men stood there, not sure what to do. What came next was something I had not anticipated. There was a loud _bang!_ that made me close my eyes and drop to the floor. Something, liquid perhaps sprayed all over my face. There was another loud bang that made me go temporarily deaf. I could not hear anything but white noise. Disoriented, I opened my eyes and found that both men's heads had been blown off and I was drenched in their blood. I could see their arteries still pumping out blood, straining for the blood in the head that would never come. Transfixed, I watched the veins twitch involuntarily one last time before they went limp for good.

"Just a reflex. They were dead the moment I blew their heads off. The body takes a moment to catch up," a smooth voice said behind me. I turned around and saw him. He was wearing a black trenchcoat. There was a shotgun in his hands, and his black eyes revealed nothing. His smile, suave, quiet and sardonic held everything.

The contrast between us could not be any more different. I was a Climber, he was popular. He looked like he'd just gotten prepared for a fashion shoot and I was drenched in sweat, dead flesh and blood. He was confident. I was scared. Whatever I had felt the moment before my captors had died had ebbed away at the sight of Game who was regarding me coolly.

"I..." I didn't know what to say. I stood up shakily.

"A thanks might suffice," he said, not looking at me. He ran a thumb down the right barrel of the gun.

I swallowed. "You're not going to blame this on me, are you? When they find the bodies?"

"Now why would I do that, Glace?" Strange how he knew my name. People often referred to me as _the Climber girl_. There was only one Climber girl in this county after all. Climbers here did not have children. Too risky, they said. It wasn't an environment to raise Climbers.

I didn't have an answer to his question. His smile grew kind as he approached me. Warily, I stepped back. "Look, I won't harm you. These guys deserved what was coming to them. I'm on your side," he murmured in a low, soothing voice.

It was strange how I was suddenly living every girl in _Fairview Highschool's_ dream. The object of many people's desires saving them. All Game needed was a white horse and armor. As if he heard my thoughts, Game's smile curved deeper.

"Th-thank you," I said.

"For covering you in blood?" Game asked. He drew a pale hand and began to wipe the blood and sinew off my face. His fingers were long, cool and gentle against my skin.

I didn't question it until much later, but I should have. For everything that had transpired that night, Game was surprisingly tranquil, his eyes as black and liquid as a lake whose surface hadn't rippled in years.

•

From that moment on, Game became my best friend and in the process, I became the most hated girl in school.

"Why would he hang out with a _Climber_?" I heard one of my classmates, Barbara, scoff. Other girls muttered in agreement.

"Ignore them," he'd say whenever he noticed the way my face would tighten.

It was strange, but around Game, I was never afraid or saddened by these comments. Instead a flame had been ignited within me, small and flickering at first. But with every passing comment, stare, and pointed silence, the flame grew into something far more physical. It was unfair that I and the other boy in school, Popo, had to be subjected to such torment.

But while I was steadily growing a temper, Game was always there to quiet it down. Our relationship was, by no means romantic. But that did not mean we weren't close. Sometimes, platonic relationships ran far deeper. We complemented each other in many ways.

That wasn't to say that Game didn't have his own flaws. There was something almost possessive in his quietness and he constantly seemed withdrawn from the world. He only remerged back in when my attention strayed away from him.

There was one time that Popo had come up to me to ask me if I'd done homework. After he left, Game was at my side, as if he'd been there all along, as if he'd been my shadow. "You like him?"

"Hardly."

Game hulked over me, his eyes uncommunicative. "Sure," he said and although his tone and mouth was teasing, his eyes were not. They had been as they always would be, closed off, dead to the world. The effect was almost eerie. He relentlessly teased me all the way to class. I suppose with the territory of being my protector, he sometimes stepped over his bounds.

Sometimes he was cruel unintentionally. Once during lunch time, I spent the duration of it trying to rip out a hangnail that appeared on my ring finger in the least painful way possible. Game had been telling me something about a TV show. It took him two minutes to realize that I wasn't paying attention. "Here," he said, grabbing my hand. With his other hand, he grabbed the nail piece and violently ripped it out. I cried out, feeling a searing pain. Blood began to ooze out diligently and I sucked my finger irritably.

"What was that for?"

"I was talking to you," he said. "Pay attention."

Uneasily, I turned away. It was the first time I acknowledged that there may be something wrong with him. My finger stayed in my mouth for the duration of lunch, the sticky, overripe sweetness pulsing steadily into my mouth. I tasted warm metal and I wasn't sure if I liked it or not.

•

The day of high school graduation, three years later, Game asked me out on a date which came as a surprise. He did not seem embarrassed or faint from anticipation. He simply walked up to me after my parents walked off and asked me out to dinner. "I will pay," he said.

Barbara was nearby, her surly gaze focused trained on a classmate of ours as if what he was saying was the most important thing in the world. But I could tell she was listening to our conversation, like she always did. I guess that's why I said yes. Truthfully, I had never looked at Game romantically. He was attractive, and he defended me from the brunt of most insults, but he was a _guy_.

And I'd sooner date Barbara despite her snobbish attitude.

Nevertheless, I wore the one push up bra I owned, lipstick (the first time I ever touched it) and even painted my toes a bright red. Game was at the door, silent as a shadow. He held a white lily in his hands which he carefully placed in my hair, behind my ear. I shuddered which made Game smirk slightly, as if he knew something I didn't. But he was always smiling like that. "I think lilies are far more romantic than roses, don't you agree?"

I didn't care, but I nodded. His fingers, long and delicate grasped mine as he led me to his car, black, slick. He was the perfect gentleman, holding the door open for me. In the confines of my leathered seat, I sighed. Never had I been subjected to something so expensive. I had always walked to school and my parents biked to work. The few times I had taken the

"Where are we going?" I stared at the darkened road.

"Why? Don't you trust me?" There was that secretive smirk again.

"You're my best friend."

Game increased the speed of the car. We entered a dirt road. There was silence for a few moments before Game asked the question. "If you had to pick a way to die, how would you do it?"

"I don't know." I hadn't given it a lot of thought. "In my sleep, old, and in bed." Evidently it wasn't the answer Game was looking for. I could tell by the way he grew silent at that. "What about you?"

Game's eyes sliced to mine, liquid and almost lazy. "I fantasize about drowning. I imagine filling your lungs with water must be quite an experience."

"A painful experience."

Game's close-mouthed smile grew into a full on smile. "Yes. Painful." He eased the brakes so that the car slowed down to a clearing that overlooked a lake. The moon's reflection sat there so perfectly, it was hard to tell which was the real one and which was fake. There was one other car - a beat up truck that looked more than twenty years old. Game pulled down the windows halfway, turned off the ignition and faced me, unbuckling his seatbelt. For a moment, we just stared at each other. You could not hear a cricket chirping.

"How are you, Nana?" It was the first time he'd asked me that question. It sounded odd to hear him treat me like just an acquaintance.

"Well enough." I gave him a strange look. To busy myself, I pulled the lily from behind my ear and smelled it. "This is pretty." Almost unnaturally perfect and so white that all color had been extracted from it. "Where did you get it?"

Game opened his mouth to answer, but before he could, there was a rap at his side, prompting him to twist around. It was Barbara. Behind that leering mask was a look of fury mixed with jealousy. I tightened my lips but did not say a word as Game unfurled the rest of the window. "What is it?" he asked, without bothering to say hello.

Barbara's eyes flitted over to me. "Why are you with her?" she asked, not bothering to lower her voice. I could detect the envy dripping from every syllable.

I could not see Game's face, as his head was turned against me. But I could feel him smiling quietly when he responded, "I guess for the same reason you came here with Popo."

My mouth dropped at the same rate that Barbara turned as purple as her hair. She gasped. "I don't know..." but she didn't bother to complete her sentence. She knew she'd been found out.

But it suddenly became clear to me. Barbara couldn't have owned such a beat up truck that could have fetched a price at a museum. Only a Climber would buy such an eyesore. It was strange that my biggest antagonist was fucking the very reason she supposedly despised me.

It should have made me smug. I should have been relieved that I had a means of blackmailing her into never tormenting me again. Instead I saw red and I couldn't understand where all this blind rage was coming from. I was hardly aware that Game was watching me with a sort of detached curiosity.

"You little piece of shit!" I had never cursed aloud. In my head? Yes, plenty of times. Aloud and no less to one of the most popular musicians in my school? I never dreamed of it but these words were the breaking point to a dam. I opened the door and slammed it shut behind me. I probably dented it, but I didn't care. "You fucking hypocrite!"

The world was tinted in red and the full moon was the color of blood.

I'm not sure what happened after that, except that when the moon was back to a blank white, Barbara was in the grass in front of me, lying in a pool of dark liquid that was slowly seeping into the soft earth. Her head had been bludgeoned many times but by what weapon, I couldn't guess. It wasn't a sword though, that much I could tell. Whatever it had been was heavy and flat - like the trunk of a tree.

I looked away from her bashed in head, a wave of nausea making the world spin. I dropped to my knees and when I smelled death, I hunched over and promptly vomited.

Had I done this?

Shaking, I put my hand on Barbara's shoulder and moved her on her back so I could take a look at her face. I felt the deadness in the way she at first refused to budge and then flopped easily over. My pulse raced. The left side of her face had been smashed in, leaving her face entirely disfigured. One eye had been smashed in, the other pale eye was staring up at the winking night sky with absolutely no expression. The only way I knew it was her was the fact that her hair was still that ridiculous shade of purple. I swallowed.

"Nana," the voice was quiet, but so loud it made me flinch.

I turned around to look at Game who had silently walked over to me from the car. Like the day we became friends, my hands were covered in blood and his expression was aloof. As if he did not care that I was a murderer. His pale face turned blurry and I began to panic, not knowing why. It wasn't until he brought his cool thumb against my cheek and drew it away that I realized I had been crying.

His tongue crept out and he licked the wetness off. "Tears of anguish," he murmured to himself. "But also, justification." He looked satisfied.

My breaths were coming out in gasps now. "What do you mean justification?"

"You're sad that you did what you had to do, but you also thought it was justified. You don't feel guilty at the fact that you took a life, Nana. You're just upset that you were pushed this far."

My panic turned into a flash of another uncharacteristic anger. "It's the same thing, just the latter sounds more selfish."

Game chuckled mirthlessly. "You're a killer, Nana." He sounded thoughtful when he said next, "It's easy to kill an enemy. But I wonder how you would feel if you were presented with the choice kill one of your own."

"What do you mean?" Game was really starting to freak me out. He had already been strange and I had accepted that, but for once the dead stillness in his eyes made me want to run.

"At this very moment Popo Aquas is in his truck. He does not know what to do. He lacks a cellphone, so he's hoping we'll drive away so that he can get to a pay phone and anonymously call the police, since if he calls them as himself, they'll point the blame on him. However, if he calls anonymously, and tells them it was _you_ and I was there as a witness, the police will get you instead. So what do you do in this situation? There's only one clear path." His eyes glittered.

_Kill_.

"No," I said aloud, not daring to look at the car. Popo was the only person who understood what I went through in school because he was subjected to the same bullying. I didn't have anything against him either. "I won't do it."

A flash of irritation came and went so quickly in Game's eyes that I wondered if I had imagined it or not. "Not even to save your own skin? Did I pick wrong? It's because you're a _girl_, isn't it?"

My mouth tightened. "I'm not you, Game. I don't kill people without a second thought."

These words were meant to pierce his ego, but it didn't. "Glad you noticed."

I sucked in a breath, my heart beating slower and slower as I tried to find a way out of this. But as I looked at Barbara's face wondering if the stuff leaking out of her skull was her brain or not, I couldn't see a way out. _My life or Popo's_.

My hands clenched the blades of grass, uprooting them from the earth.

•

Popo's blood was an even darker shade of red than Barbara's. My dress, which was a light pink, was now coated in their blood. The barrage of guilt that assaulted me was less relentless this time. It had been easier when I was conscious to walk up to the truck, pull off the door with as much force as I could muster and grab him by the jacket and slammed him to the ground outside. After a brief tussle, I had straddled him. I made him face me as he spewed out incoherent sentences.

"Please... Nana... Please... I won't tell them about... Please..." He had wheezed when I grabbed his throat and pressed my thumbs agains the hollow of his throat. His panicked black eyes had widened as he struggled against my grip, but it was hard. I felt his pulse struggle against my touch, beating forcefully at first, as if trying to get as much blood in. Then I felt it beat quicker and quicker, more frenzied than the last. I felt him urinate through his pants, the wetness clinging to my inner thighs. He was choking now, his face turning red. I murmured a phrase in Climber, one that we always muttered before a necessary killing for food._  
_

He looked at me as I recited this phrase, the familiarity of being a Climber washing over him gently. In that moment, he knew as sure as a lamb knows of his slaughter, that this was his final moments. The acceptance of sacrifice both broke my heart and exhilarated me. I felt envious that he was leaving this world where we Climbers did not even belong and I could not.

When he was dead, I knew there was only one more task to complete this. I turned up to Game who was quietly watching me, a sardonic smile written on his face.

I walked up to the lake and he joined me.

"There Nana, that wasn't so hard was it?" he crooned. I could still feel the way Popo's life had felt in my hands and I felt powerful even though my strength had faded.

"You're right." Game was my best friend. My best friend who had taught me that death was necessary and that it was intoxicating. He taught me that violence was just another word for justice. He taught me that some things, whether we like them or not, were completely necessary.

I knew Game had been playing me all along, as true to his name. Knew he had goaded me to kill Popo because he had been jealous of him because I did not hate him. He had seduced me to eliminate the object of his envy, so obsessed with me. I wasn't sure when Game had gotten this way - maybe he had always been since the moment he killed those two guys in the alley. It didn't matter when it had happened. Now that his turn was over, it was time to make my move.

I looked at him for a split second before leaning forward to kiss him. I had never kissed anybody before, but I wasn't nervous. I did not love Game in that way. Without a moment's hesitation, I grabbed him by the lapels of his black shirt, and pressed him against me. I felt my own heart beating steadily, steadily, as I wrapped my hands around his back, my legs around his torso. I felt him grow hard and stiff against the inside of my thigh. He made a noise and I sighed, not caring how fake it sounded.

I broke away when he licked my earlobe and whispered something.

"You know, you didn't kill Barbara. I did."

I watched him for any change of expression, but there was none. Dead, and therefore unreadable. It took me a minute to realize that Popo's death was useless, that it was for nothing. It took me another minute to realize that my plans would not change. Just the reasoning for it would.

It made sense. My hands could not cause such a blunt force to Barbara's head. It would have had to be something big and heavy.

The realization of being manipulated was what really made me push Game into the lake. The surface rippled finally, the moon was obscured as he waited for me to grab him by his shirt. His eyes the whole time signaled that he was still playing him but I didn't care. I wanted him to die. "You made me..." I sputtered. "You..." I pushed his head underwater, willing him to drown. My best friend, my worst enemy. He bobbed upward, his hair slicked back from his face.

"I won't truly die, because I'm not human Nana," he coughed. "I'm an _idea_. And once you kill me, you will be cursed with it. You will be me."

I held him underwater for a few more minutes. I couldn't say whether he died or not because he did not struggle against me. I remembered too late that he wanted to die drowning, with his lungs set on fire by water. It must have burned in the worst possible way to breathe in water, I thought.

When I pulled him out, he was a different person. He was completely black, the shade of his eyes. I realized what he meant when he said he was an idea as I stared at his true form.

He was a shadow lying in the grass. He was _D__eath_. A Grim Reaper.

Had he wanted to die? Was that why his eyes showed that he was playing me the whole time?

I felt something in my hand, wooden and heavy. It was a large mallet. The head was larger than my own and I understood that this was the weapon that had killed Barbara. Try as I might, I could not get rid of it. I tried to fling it into the river, but it would not let go of my hand. For an hour I just sat, staring at the shadow. He had transferred the idea of killing to me. I imagine that a job that required taking lives must not have been easy. And maybe it made sense that Game never batted an eye at killing or death. He must have been there so many times...

I wondered if our friendship had been a lie. That maybe all along Game had known that I would turn out this way and become the perfect candidate for Death's job.

An idea, huh? I stared at my hammer for a moment longer.

Our friendship may not have been a lie if he had known who I was from the start.

My fingers curled around the hammer's handle.

I was him. I had finally broken the rules and was paying the consequences, but I had never felt more powerful before. For most of my life I had been a Climber and all the racial slurs and bullying that came with it. No more. I had been rewarded.

_Death was ready._

•

**Well first off I want to thank lyokolife6 for making an exception just for me and extending the extension of the deadline. I normally am not the kind of person who asks for extensions, but I stumbled across this idea literally the night of the extension's end and I knew I needed a little more time to work out the kinks. I'm not sure if I did, but this is the best I can do in such limited time as I've been having a very busy week. So thank you a million times for your patience and understanding, lyokolife6.**

**A big thanks to Tune4Toons, who has been my bitter rival, since like the past three contests we've entered and _still_ was nice (or arrogant since horror is her thing, so she probably thinks she already has this in the bag and I'd completely agree ;P) enough to catch all my errors. Terima kasih yah! (I'm assuming, in a very ignorant way, that Malay is practically the same thing as Indonesian or is actually Indonesian, but if it's not, I'm going to look like a fool if Tune doesn't understand, but hopefully she will because she are very smart)**

**As for the characters I chose - Yes Game is Mr. Game and Watch. Yes, he is Death and the only way to become Death is to kill the previous person who holds the title. I chose Nana because I love Nana and she owns a hammer as does Game and Watch in-game. Grim Reapers usually carry scythes, but none of the Brawl characters had scythes really, so I decided to use hammers as Death's real choice of weapon.**

**The conception of this story started off a lot more lighthearted, with no blood, and with a hopeful ending that did not fit the Horror Contest. I rewrote it three times (Three different versions) before I settled for this version. I'm _still_ not satisfied with how this turned out, but because I'm cutting it close, I can't really change anything until the results have come out. Perhaps once the contest is done with, I'll change it because I think a _lot_ of improvement could have been used.**

**Barbara is not an OC. She's an assist trophy. Look her up, I swear!**

**And with that, I'm out! Good luck to all other contestants who participated in the Horror Story Contest and if you haven't submitted, then I urge you to check out the competition as I'm sure everybody here has submitted something extraordinary!**


End file.
